A team of five designers at WhiteClouds Labs took its 3D printing tech and within 24 hours created a model of Hyperloop, a proposal floated this month by Elon Musk develop a transit system that hurls people through tubes across long distances at supersonic speeds.

The Hyperloop is a just an idea and won't become a reality any time soon. Although it wasn't too long ago that 3D printing was considered a far off idea. WhiteClouds CEO Jerry Ropelate noted on the company's website that just a few years ago designing and building a scale model of this type in 24 hours would have been as theoretical as the Hyperloop itself.

Each designer at WhiteClouds took a component of the hyperloop concept and designed digital 3D models based on images released by Musk (hat tip to Gigaom for spotting this first). The group then used three different 3D printers to make the parts layer by layer, the company said. The team then assembled the parts to create the scale model.

Kirsten Korosec has written for Technology Review, Marketing News, The Hill, BNET and Bloomberg News. She holds a degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. She is based in Tucson, Arizona.
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